Munibond racketeering rife - Feds have multi-agency investigation | Toll Roads News: "Bid rigging, tax evasion and other forms of racketeering are rife in the municipal bond business and a huge multijurisdiction criminal investigation has been underway for several years now, the New York Times reports in its business pages. Public toll agencies base almost all their longterm financing on the municipal bond markets so it is of great interest within the US toll industry.
The criminal investigation started as an IRS affair but has ballooned to involve FBI, USDOJ, SEC, and several state law enforcement agencies.
'“It’s rare to sell a Senate seat, but it’s not rare to sell a bond deal. Pay-to-play in the municipal bond market is epidemic. It looks as if there has been price-fixing and bid-rigging on a major scale,' a recently retired IRS manager Charles Anderson told the Times. Anderson was manager of tax-exempt bond operations at the IRS.
The Times report also quotes Michael Hausfeld an anti-trust lawyer in Washington who represents some of the state and municipal governments caught up in the federal dragnet as saying the munibond investigation is 'one of the longest-running, most economically pervasive antitrust conspiracies ever to be uncovered in the US.'"
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Well--when this turns from an investigation into an indictment, it will cause another huge disruption in the fiscal environment of state and local governments, and probably universities as well.
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